Aliyah knew it was ridiculous to think the woman in the ad was actually looking at her.
There were short looping videos in ads all the time, and they made eye contact with the camera, and therefore made eye contact with whoever was watching their screen. It did not mean that they were actually looking at her, she had seen many such ads and never once believed they were actually looking at her, but this woman… Was she looking at Aliyah?
Aliyah had gotten used to ignoring the ads. She was not willing to pay a million fees to a million different streaming services to find her favorite shows, and with the wealth of videos streaming on the internet, she did not have to pay. She just had to deal with the ads. They were a necessary evil, but years of online exploration taught her how to put the images out of mind, and then magically out of sight. It was almost like the ads become a frame for the video, decorative and nothing more. This woman was like any other ad on the screen that she easily ignored.
But was she looking at Aliyah?
The woman was nondescript in a pretty sort of way, a little too blond to be real, her teeth a little too straight. It was a look that usually put Aliyah on edge, but this woman seemed almost inviting. The ad instructed Aliyah, “Click Here For Your Chance To Win,” and the woman smiled as she pointed up at the words. And then pointed at Aliyah. Her chance to win what? She would not know until she clicked.
Aliyah quickly swerved the cursor away. You never clicked on the ads, not unless you wanted to kill your computer.
The woman in the video pouted and shrugged.
The computer froze for a moment, and then the ad was replaced, that familiar image of a half-duck half-watermelon, asking Aliyah, “Has Science Gone Too Far?”
Ridiculous, as ridiculous as whatever she had been thinking a moment ago, but at least the woman was in the left-hand corner now.
She waved at Aliyah, and winked. Aliyah just wanted to watch her show, but the video was still buffering, and it was stupid to feel this nervous, so she flipped off the model.
The model pulled up her lips in a snarl. Her eyes went black, and her teeth did not just look straight now, but exceptionally long. The woman transformed into a mass of broken colors under a stunted title: “- Here For You- – -”
Aliyah snapped her computer shut.
No. The model had not snarled, it was the pixels going haywire, too many ads trying to stream at once.
Aliyah knew she should restart her computer. Just in case that was some weird reaction to a virus. She did not click anything, but sometimes just having the page open was enough. She should at least close the page. That woman’s snarl. It was just a loading error. It was not directed at her.
Aliyah opened her computer.
Her first thought was, “Shit,” because it looked like the ad had indeed infected her computer. There was no other reason why it would take up the whole screen like that, a close-up of that woman’s face, still in its horrible distortion. Though it did not look particularly pixelated. It just looked like the woman was snarling, her eyes solid black and yet still able to stare right at Aliyah. The woman’s mouth opened, but no sound came out, and Aliyah was glad her computer was on mute.
Her second thought was “Shit,” because no matter how hard she pressed on the power button, her computer refused to turn off. She unplugged it, but she could not see how charged it was behind the image of the woman that did not react to “ctrl-alt-delete,” or “esc.”
The woman pointed at Aliyah, and words began to scroll across the top of the screen: “Click Here For Your Chance To Win. Click Here For Your Chance To Win. Click Here For Your Chance –”
The movement was hypnotizing. And this time, Aliyah forgot to swerve her cursor away, and instead, she clicked.
The video began to play, but it was not the video Aliyah was looking for. It was a video of some hipster with dated headphones obscuring his ears, frowning into the screen. Aliyah tried to exit, but her keyboard was not in front of her any more. She was not in her dorm. She was not anywhere. It was like she was in a small cell, all white, adjacent to other cells. Some of the cells only contained words, some only contained pictures, some contained people who looked terrified or insane. But one cell on the far side of the screen contained a basic blond who winked at Aliyah, before turning to the hipster. She smiled at him and then pointed to the words above her head.
Aliyah screamed, but the boy probably had his sound on mute. She waved her arms, but he ignored her. Aliyah knew how easy it was to ignore the ads at the side of the screen, but she still tried to warn him. Out of the corner of her eye she could see occupants in other cells waving their hands, too, screaming their own silent warnings, or else, just screaming. But the boy did not pay attention to any of them. He was frowning at the blond woman, his cursor hovering over her, about to click.
